1. Field of Invention
The present invention pertains to the field of healthcare devices. More particularly, this invention relates to healthcare devices which are universally accessible using open standard network protocols.
2. Art Background
A variety of devices for obtaining medical information pertaining to patients are commonly employed in hospitals and clinics. For example, blood analyzers are commonly used in hospitals and clinics to obtain blood chemistry measurements such as glucose level. Other devices include devices for measuring heart rate, blood pressure, and devices for recording electrocardiogram data. Such devices are hereinafter referred to as healthcare devices. Such healthcare devices include portable devices such as portable blood analyzers, etc.
Prior healthcare devices commonly provide an access mechanism for transferring the medical information contained therein to a computer system. Such an access mechanism usually facilitates distribution of the medical information by taking advantage of the display and storage capabilities of a computer system.
The access mechanism of prior healthcare devices usually requires a computer system having a proprietary interface which is designed specially for the particular healthcare device. Typically, such a proprietary interface includes specialized software that executes on the computer system. Typically, a healthcare worker accesses medical information from such a prior healthcare device by transporting the healthcare device to the special computer system, attaching the healthcare device to a docking station or standard mechanism such as an RS232 port of the special computer system, and then initiating a transfer from the healthcare device using specialized software executing on the computer system.
Unfortunately, such prior methods of accessing healthcare devices are usually not well suited to out of hospital or out of clinic environments such as a patient's home where computer systems with proprietary interfaces are usually not available. Moreover, the costs associated with equipping a location such as a patient's home with a specialized computer system for accessing information from healthcare devices is usually prohibitively expensive.
Such limitations on the ability to access medical information in certain environments usually limits the utility of prior healthcare devices. For example, a visiting nurse may collect glucose data from a patient in the patient's home using a prior portable blood analyzer. Typically, the obtained glucose data remains stored in the portable blood analyzer until the visiting nurse returns to the hospital or clinic and manually initiates the transfer of the stored data to a special computer system. Unfortunately, a doctor cannot read the glucose data obtained with such a prior portable blood analyzer while it is in transit between the patient's home and the hospital.